Tag Archives: mindfullness

Sharing seven days’ worth of minimalist practices with hopes that we can all find some clarity…

“Minimalism is a tool to rid yourself of life’s excess in favor of focusing on what’s important—so you can find happiness, fulfillment and freedom.”- The Minimalists

Stepping back and looking at where I am in life, and how things create a few more butterflies in my chest that I’d like, I’m going to be practicing a minimalist act each day of the week, and sharing them with you. If you are feeling like your life is a bit dizzying, take a look deeper and see how much stuff you are carrying on a day-to-day basis, and join me. At the beginning of each week, I will be posting 7 days’ worth of minimalist practices with hopes of finding and maintaining some clarity.

Tuesday: Pit Stop. When you stop to pump gas today, clean out your car. Throw out any trash, and put the clutter in your trunk. When you get home tonight, take out the excess and put it where it belongs — inside. This will make your commute to work a bit more relaxing.

Wednesday: Paperless. Go through all of your online bills today and, if you haven’t already, opt out of direct mail. This will not only help your house from collecting clutter, but will also help the environment.

Thursday: Practice Gratitude. Be mindful and appreciate both the little and big things in your life. That’s what this is all about. Write a list of everything and everyone for which you are grateful. Think about editing out what wasn’t listed.

Friday: Tackle the Fridge. The amount of condiments in your refrigerator can sometimes get to be a little much. Clean out your fridge. Toss out any items that are expired, wipe down the shelves, and prepare the space to be filled with clean healthy food going into the next week.

Saturday: Plan a Yard Sale. Look into the summer yard sales happening around your community. Pick one, and start planning. Make a list of things that you haven’t used in the last 3 months, and make a point to let go of them. Yard sales can be a fun neighborhood routine to get into during the warm months. A little bit of work can rid you of a lot of stuff.

Sunday: Morning Ritual. Wake up at 6am this morning. Give yourself a couple hours before your busy day and develop a calming ritual, whether it’s a brisk walk, a bath, or a big breakfast. Throughout this series I’ve tried to mention how important time is to a minimal lifestyle. The goal is to reclaim our time so that we can have more of it for ourselves, for relationships, for gratitude, and to simply be free.

+ Good luck this week! If you are joining in on this challenge, let me know in the comments!

Sharing seven days’ worth of minimalist practices with hopes that we can all find some clarity…

“Minimalism is a tool to rid yourself of life’s excess in favor of focusing on what’s important—so you can find happiness, fulfillment and freedom.” – The Minimalists

Stepping back and looking at where I am in life, and how stuff is creating a few more butterflies in my chest that I’d like, I’m going to be practicing a minimalist act each day of the week, and share them with you. If you are feeling like your life is a bit dizzying, take a look deeper and see how much stuff you are carrying on a day-to-day basis, and join me.

At the beginning of each week, I will be posting 7 days’ worth of minimalist practices with hopes of finding and maintaining some clarity.

Week Two

Monday: Practice Mindfulness. During your lunch break, take 30 minutes to practice mindfulness. Focus on your present moment, calmly accept any feelings that you are having, and allow yourself a therapeutic half-hour. This practice is so important to implement on a daily basis, as it resets your body to focus on the important things.

Tuesday: Minimal Ingredients. Consume minimal numbers of ingredients today. Try spending the day eating clean, raw, wholesome foods. If you can’t make an entire day of it, try making one tiny switch in your routine and make time to really notice the natural flavors in one of your favorite indulgences. For me, I’m a matcha girl through and through. I usually add a bit of coconut milk, collagen peptides, and a drizzle of honey each morning to sweeten it up a bit. If you’re a coffee girl, go cream- or sugar-free.

Wednesday: Declutter Your Workspace. It’s hard to be inspired if your workspace is a mess. It’s also easy to let it get out of hand when you are constantly doing your job. Take 10 minutes and do a quick sweep of your space today. Clean off surfaces, organize piles, and get rid of anything you don’t need.

Thursday: Night Ritual. Slow down your evening — develop a nighttime ritual. Gather a few things that make you happy and peaceful, and visit/use them before bed. This will allow you to refrain from over-tasking and focus on a restful night’a sleep.

Friday: Donate Box. Start a “donate box”. Put it in a corner of your home, and add something to it daily or weekly.

Saturday: Experience. Go out and try something new. Instead of spending money on a physical thing, instead consider an experience. Spending on experiences is always a yes in the world of minimalism. Need some inspiration? Here you go.

Operate by former food generator and advertising government Jacqui Lewis and her companion, item custom and artwork representative Arran Russell, Sydney’s The Wide Location is a middle focused on historic methods and understanding for the things they have created “contemporary high quality dwelling”. Alongside philosophical events, coaching, office applications along with other ways of altering individuals’s considering to hook them up to a road to better-quality of existence, Vedic arbitration may be the foundation of The Wide Location, around which everything orbits. Which is the exercise of Vedic yoga that I got from Arran and Jacqui this past year.

In the same roots as Transcendental meditation (lately introduced in to the highlight by devotee and supporter David Lynch), Vedic yoga is just a rule-centered exercise, preferably involved set for 20 units, twice each day, that can help you surpass thought and plunge into real awareness, cleaning the nervous system and delivering tension, pessimism and pressure along the way. Are just some of the advantages include reduced nervousness, elevated pleasure higher quality, and increased imagination. And where your brain moves, your body uses, with this specific kind increase brainpower of yoga confirmed in medical reports to reduce blood-pressure and enhance cardiovascular wellness. Thirty units of yoga is considered equal to two hours of rest. A training course in Vedic yoga is unquestionably an expense (charging around $1000), however it’s among the many lasting, major, life long resources it’s possible to have in his/her home-treatment package. Should you’re fascinated, look for a professional VM or TM instructor that retains a training course that operates over four sequential periods (anybody who promises they are able to train the technique in one single sitting isn’t legit).

Besides the VM exercise, there have been numerous takeaways from my period invested in The Wide Location that, whether you’re a meditator or not, are small jewels of knowledge for improving imagination, efficiency, closeness and dealing with grips with that most contemporary of persistent conditions: tension. Below simply really are a small number of classes that proceed to resonate.

High Quality Dwelling

This really is one of The Wide Place’s grounding concepts and this type of simple-yet mind expanding idea. “ rsquo high quality dwelling doesn&;t imply pressing and trying for quality or luxury,” claims Lewis. “We curently have a quality existence that is higher, if perhaps we stop keeping us along and allow a few of the low-grade drop away. It s about allowing the reduced quality reduce and finding the right in most second. High quality dwelling is where we consider every day at the same time, and perform a a bit more of what we adore, of why is us pleased, along with a small less of what doesn’t last about the greatest level.”

A few examples:

-do you want to feel much better for opting for that stroll, or without it?
-do you want to experience healthier should you consume half of a wine bottle or should you proceed without today?
-May dropping your self-control over anything little in a couple of hours cause you to feel happy with who you’re, or cause you to experience regret?
-May getting 10 moments to get a peaceful mug of tea or espresso aid you be much more effective for that remaining day, or are you able to truly not sacrifice the full time?

“ rsquo & It;s truly simply having an increased feeling of consciousness which allows the correct options to be made by us, from being existing,& rdquo along with an increased feeling of consciousness originates. “we have to handle the little issues, because rsquo & it;s the little actions that result in steps that are larger. It s truthfully no surprise as occasionally the notion of everything we delay our very own joy we have to do to do this is merely also large to handle. Therefore start little. Load every day with anything you like, and handle circumstances in ways which makes you happy. Handle digestion and the body with love and regard . Focus on relationships and your associations with small issues &mdash . Consider this thought along with you in all you do: ‘may this provide me joy, or remove from this?’ after which create an informed choice from that location, not from the place of shame or ‘must’. Create choices centered on getting the greatest quality into your lifetime at each opportunity.”

Hovering into Concern

A former panic patient, Lewis today promotes experiencing your worries head on. “Shying from it, faking rsquo & it;s worse, or not there avoiding performing things that cause anxiety and stress I’ve discovered rdquo,& useless . “We’re not technically blame as chickens. Collecting just the things they have to produce their houses, they invest the majority of their period performing, socializing fully and sliding through the atmosphere. Lighting, dealing with character&rsquo and stunning;s components, they’re the alternative of anxiety and fear. I believe that once we are held with nervousness or concern, or that terrible mixture of equally, subsequently seeking to character is really uplifting. T observe any nervous lorikeets, consumed with stress magpies or higher worked kookaburras after I sit at sundown I wear&rsquo in our yard. I and that I observe elegance and elegance, respectively. And at this time, that’s how I do want to be.”

Stay Every Single Day with Question and Amazement

On the current vacation, Lewis observed room that was just how much she offered existence to be merely marveled at by himself, appreciating sunlight glinting puddles off and experiencing the squelching noise her toes created when she walked in to the dull mud to start her stand up paddleboard. She got the full time at hand- French and mill press her espresso every morning and loved occasions that were lengthy quietly watching character. “ splice it with actual life, and Just How To seize all of the appeal, all of the elegance and question of vacation life?” she considered. “in my opinion the important thing would be to maintain the question, to maintain the amazement; to maintain extensive and available and wide. To consider nothing without any consideration in evening-today dwelling. I don’t imply in a ‘ isn whoa ’ rsquo pleased method?& t existence stunning. That doesn t last. I am talking about athome and at the office in a heavy resonation with all things. Realizing how a rain drops in the place of bitching regarding the rainfall about the windshield operating to function. Making the effort to consume our espresso placed, not strolling the road on our mobile phones down. In the place of while producing lunchtime, making the effort to sit down in the desk consuming our toast ranking within our home. May we match everything in if we take the time to luxuriate in each second? From knowledge, yes we do. Could it be more demanding getting the time to complete items nicely, once we may shed some time and revel in them? Definitely not, as what we acquire in exchange is significantly more essential: dwelling fully.”

Recycling Tension

That one is just in turning our viewpoint, a truly serious workout. “Our instructor Thom Knoles usually claims that people should not be regardless what we worship, which engaging encounter or exactly the same thought over and over is worship,” describes Lewis. “ As people we often praise the damaging, considering all of the time in regards to a perceived poor scenario, investing plenty of power reliving the knowledge, informing again and again the tale more elaborately every time. Why do we praise anything damaging, investing our thinking into that point we were ‘ or disrespected ’ harmed or experienced rage? Why praise whenever we were stop in perhaps a buddy or traffic stated anything unkind? It becomes an entire different issue, doesn t it whenever we determine it as praise? It seems completely foolish to praise something yes is really wanted of, by t? This encounter may be stress’ recycling. Anything unwanted occurred after which we maintain restoring it. More tension is merely created by this within our systems. Why do we feel required to carry on recycling the knowledge if it had been terrible the very first time? From the present-moment we draw ourselves with each retelling, harming it having a past that is damaging. If you want to improve our happiness.&rdquo we ought to quit carrying this out; whenever we are damaging aloud, we wear’ more tension is simply created by t these around us, however although for ourselves . As well as whenever rsquo & we;re cautious to not speech these feelings that are dim, we may be considering them nevertheless. “Privately, within the solitude of our heads, harbouring bad thoughts, judgemental shades and down-right vicious thoughts, is equally as harmful to our nervous methods as stating it aloud,” claims Lewis. “Stopping this decreases tension and raises happiness.” the clear answer? Empathy. “ Every individual is currently doing something: seeking happiness they are able to. As we certainly comprehend and regard the reality, and also that they may not be seeking exactly the same method we’re, but nevertheless want to buy nonetheless our empathy increases to it. All of the ‘ rsquo & damaging; encounters melt off. It s simply all material concerning others seeking joy the same as us. Empathy is just an amazing method to block out pessimism on every degree. Allow’s grasp more of it.”

For more of Lewis’ musings and contemporary undertake historic concepts, browse the Wide Location diary; obtain their Seven-Day Brain Clean; and appear out due to their up coming Vedic yoga programs and excursions happening in Sydney, Asia and L A in 2016.